A couple of days ago, in “Eating While Catholic,” I referred to an employee being fired by her Muslim employer for eating a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at work, because the employer considers pork unclean. This appears to be legal, a fact (assuming it is a fact) that generated some interesting comments.
Believe it or not, this discussion reminds me of the ongoing debate over admissions preferences, specifically the familiar argument that anyone who opposes racial preferences without opposing legacy/athletic/music talent preferences is a hyypocrite. (This argument, in fact, is so common that I gave it a name, Invidious Ubiquitous Non-Sequitur, and discussed it so often that you can find them here by doing a search on “IUNS.”)
Briefly, the IUNS is based on the fallacy of assuming that all discrimination is the same, that if giving preferences on the basis of athletic or musical ability or where one’s parents went to college is acceptable, then so is giving preferences on the basis of race. Racial discrimination, on this view, is no different from or worse than discrimination on any other basis.
I find this argument both offensive and absurd, but you already know that. Now let’s return to Lina Morales, the employee who was fired for eating a BLT. Employers have very wide discretion in setting rules for their workplaces. An employee has no right to eat a BLT. Similarly, if an employer who graduated from, say, Yale or Michigan State wanted to hire a fellow alum, an applicant rejected because he went to Harvard or Michigan could not claim his rights were violated. There is no right not to be discriminated against because of your poor (or wise) choice in colleges. Such discrimination may be dumb, and it will certainly be offensive to the rejected applicants, but there’s no federal case to be made of it.
So I suspect that Ms. Morales is out of a job and that it is unlikely her lawsuit will succeed. But what if her employer had fired (or refused to hire) her because he thought blacks were infidels, and hence even worse than unclean? We would be outraged, and properly so. That’s because we do have a right not be discriminated against because of our race.
In diminishing the difference between discrimination on the basis of race (and by implication, religion) and other, more mundane types of discrimination, preferentialists have done grave damage to the principle underlying the very civil rights they claim to favor.
“In diminishing the difference between discrimination on the basis of race (and by implication, religion) and other, more mundane types of discrimination, preferentialists have done grave damage to the principle underlying the very civil rights they claim to favor.”
I think an important concept to introduce into the moral calculus is the idea of the immutability and innocence of the discriminated factor — you allude to it when you say their ‘choice’ of college.
I think we find — or at least I find — more moral opprobrium for discrimination that is based on a characteristic that is immutable and fault-less — say, skin color, or birth to an ivy leaguer — than one that is not so, like eating a ham sandwich.
I don’t mean that this is the end all be all, but it is an important factor.
I am surpirse that the court case about the amarillo texas insurance office where the boss had a “No Spanish” rule at the work place (even during breaks)
Since the employer is not paying for the lunch hour, the employer has no say in what people eat.
The other argument is that with the employer saying “no pork,” the employer is imposing a set or religious principles (values)on the employees. This would be the same as a employer requiring employees to attend bible study or group prayer as a condition of work because the employer believes that not attending a prayer service makes the indivdiual “unclean”.
It may also violate the reasonable accommodation rules of the EEOC.
actus – immutability is certainly a relevant consideration, but it is not the basis of the wall that bars (or should bar) gov’t from trespassing upon certain fundamental rights. Students without athletic or musical ability or high IQs do not choose to be without those attributes, but institutions are and should be perfectly free to reward those who have them if they choose. One could also make a strong argument that one does choose one’s religion (though that view is not as obvious to those from non-protestant, non-individualist cultures as it is to most Americans), but the fact that someone chooses to be a Jew or a Muslim does not (or again, should not) mean religous preferences (and concomitant religous penalities) are legitimate. There are historical as well as purely moral reasons why race and religion should be placed off limits to government discrimination.
“The other argument is that with the employer saying ‘no pork,’ the employer is imposing a set or religious principles (values)on the employees.”
How is that any different than an employer firing someone because he finds out his employee is gay or that another employee committed adultery, or fornication, or that she is shacking up, or had an abortion. All of these things stem from “a set of religious principles (values)” as well.
Unless the employee can point to a particular protected attribute of hers that is being violated, i.e., their “race,” “religion,” “gender,” an employer is allowed to discriminate on the basis of employees not comporting to what the employer thinks is conduct consistent with his orthodox religion.
In other words, for a religious employer to state, don’t do X, because X violates my religion, is NOT religious discrimination unless the employee can demonstrate that they have a religious obligation to do X. And as far as I know, no religion mandates that their faithful EAT pork. If there were, then such discrimination might be illegal in that circumstance.
FFor instance, Jews have an obligation to eat Kosher. If the employer said you mustn’t eat kosher (or, for instance, you must come in and work on Sunday) arguably that would be religious discrimination.
At Least She Didn’t Doubledip
Discriminations: Pork, Blacks, And Yalies Archives It’s apparently okay for a Muslim boss to fire an employee for eating a BLT….
superdestroyer,
i would draw a distinction based on whether the employee had a sack lunch or went to a restaraunt. i’m sympathetic to a muslim entrepreneur who doesn’t want pork on his property, regardless of whether someone is eating it during their break or on the clock. on the other hand, a muslim employer who held that employees may not eat pork off-site is a little less appealling, although as john said, i’m not sure even in the latter situation that “eating pork at home” is the kind of thing the courts should meddle with.
Islam, like judaism, considers pork unclean and practitioners not supposed to eat it. There is nothing that says that the sight, smell et al is forbidden and that people of other religions cannot eat it.
The lebanese in our office said not only could she eat the sandwich in Lebanon, but, that she could even do so during Ramadhan and no one would give her flack. Now that is real tolerance.
Those people need to get a grip.